


Left Well Alone

by Rhaeluna



Series: Bloodborne Fairy Tales [2]
Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Byrgenwerth Scholars, Canon Compliant, City of Yharnam, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Demon Blood Addiction, Descent into Madness, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fairy Tale Style, Hunters & Hunting, Lovecraftian, Suicide, Teacher-Student Relationship, Tragedy, Tragic Romance, so much murder, tHe fOlLy oF mAn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 18:58:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16164917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhaeluna/pseuds/Rhaeluna
Summary: A dark fairy tale about Lady Maria's ambitions, her relationships, and how her choices made her what we know her to be.





	Left Well Alone

In her youth, the gallant Lady Maria of Cainhurst Castle devoured tales of adventure and mystery. She gorged herself on fables of darkness, of flame and heroes and myths made legend. Her dreams swam with the bright constellations of fantasy, her smile a reflection of her eagerness to explore. She’d often look out from her window in the castle and watch the lake waters deep into the night, pondering with excited eyes what might be lurking in the depths.

As she grew the young Lady Maria haunted the castle halls like a specter of delight, hunting for that which might pique her vast and ethereal curiosity. A distant relative of her matriarch, she and her parents held no sway and were not permitted to leave the island without cause. She thought it a blessing. Locked away in Cainhurst with only the most basic servant duties to fulfill, the curious Maria found the freedoms she required to pursue the longings of her fierce heart. 

She trained in swordsmanship, same as the squires, and sat in on lessons with the sages and scholars in her afternoons. Astronomy, theology, history, biology. A thirst drove Maria, and in the dead of night she could sometimes be heard snarling as she bit her nails and tried to plunge herself into the deepest understanding of her most recent challenge.

As the young lady learned, a theme began to stick out in her mind. A name she’d read about so much as a child, a city buried so deep not even the moles could reach it. Pthumeru, and the city build on its rubble: Yharnam. 

Moons rose and fall, and life did not often change on the isle of Cainhurst, cut off by the dark waters of the lake from the small archeological town of Yharnam that it neighbored. Maria was enamored with the settlement, quaint and plain and full of life. It called to her like a dry thirst, the proximity of it maddening. Her quiet life of study quickly became a cage, and she schemed to find her way off her ancestor’s lonely rock. 

What discoveries had been made yesterday, she thought each day. In the years since her birth more and more relics were being gradually uncovered in the deep catacombs, but were they really of the lost city as the legends told? The mere idea of her childhood fables possibly being true lit a radiant sun of adventure inside her chest. She had to know. More than she needed to breath, Maria had to know. Her frustration came out in her writing, scathing and precise, and her swordsmanship, swift and deadly. Slowly but reliably the servant lady Maria transformed a capable warrior and a knowledgeable advisor, and despite her low status amongst the noble bloodline her merits began to draw notice. 

Her opportunity came when, upon the morning of her 19th birthday, a middle-aged stranger clad in white and blue robes arrived across the gated bridge of Cainhurst Castle. Maria, consistent in her studies, had been listening intently in the throne room to the babble of lords when he arrived. 

“Honorable Annalise,” the man said with a bow to the matriarch of the Cainhurst line, “noble benefactor of Byrgenwerth’s continued research. My name is Willem, and I do not believe we have met in person.”

“No,” Annalise said, “we hath not.” 

“Well, it is my deepest pleasure to finally rectify that. Thank you for welcoming me.” 

Annalise nodded in greeting. “The pleasure is ours, scholar. What brings you to our castle?”

A wide, broken smile erupted over the man’s chapped lips. “We have done it, my lady. We have discovered ancient remnants of the gods. Their blood, proof of their existence.”

Maria bristled, and felt her own blood churn at the man’s words. A discovery? Gods? In a flash the young miss remembered the dreams of her childhood, the images of endless vistas lined with wide, staring eyes. The religion of the ancients; the Great Ones. Could they be real? The possibilities excited her, and Maria took deep breaths to hold herself calm. 

“I thought it best to tell you in person, and to thank you once again for essential contributions.”

“This is splendid news,” Annalise said to the scholar, a true smile on her face, “per our agreement, thou shall take representatives of my court back to your college, both to aid in your research and to watch over the unfurling of events. Tell me,” she leaned forward an inch, “we stand on the edge of the cosmos now, do we not?”

Willem smirked, and stood up from his low bow. “We do indeed.” 

As the man departed the hall, Maria found her legs carrying her to prostrate herself before Annalise. How long had her house been funding the archeological digs of rogue scholars? Why was this information kept secret? Concerns of the past, now. She lowered her head to the ground, and did everything in her power not to beg. “My lady, I beseech you, allow me to accompany the Master Willem back to Byrgenwerth and aid in this mission.” Her voice quivered. “It is everything I have ever dreamed, and I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I am your servant, lowly Maria, and my academic studies and skill with a blade would make me apt for observing all there was so see. Please, let me serve you.” 

A hush fell over the chamber, and all the nobles of Cainhurst locked their dozens of piercing eyes on the form of the girl at their center. For long moments, Annalise pondered, silent, barely a movement under the skin of her cheeks. As Maria realized she might be executed for speaking out and the terror shook her, the lady’s iron voice spoke once again. 

“Very well.” It was all Maria could do not to cry. 

The follow morning Lady Maria of Cainhurst found herself rocking along in a carriage as, for the first time in her life, the castle disappeared into the mist over the bridge behind her. She brought her journals, her books, and her trusted blade. Her heart steeled as the carriage flew through the thick wilderness outside Yharnam, the trees like skeletal hands emerging from the earth. 

The moment her eye spotted the regal, domed college through the wood, her heart refused to stop pounding. Maria covered her mouth with her hand as they arrived. The tall man who greeted her as she stepped from the carriage introduced himself as Gehrman. Maria found him handsome, with a great long cape and a towering scythe hitched to his back like a sword. They shared a look as she walked past, her palm on one of the blades at her hip.

The warriors of Cainhurst were led inside and welcomed with applause by Master Willem and his followers, all of whom Maria would come to know personally as they pursued their shared lust for what lie beyond the stars. The brash Micolash, technical and attentive. The quiet Caryll, adventurous and knowing; the sly Rom, silly and quick-witted. And the astute Laurence, dour and curt, whose knowledge of the arcane was only surpassed by Master Willem himself.

“That’s a lovely blade,” Gehrman said to Maria after the ceremony, pointing to her Rakuyo, “how did you come across such a thing?” 

Maria smiled, shy, and pulled the blades from their twin sheaths. “It’s an heirloom.”

“Have you fought before?” 

A smirk. “Only with my trainers, Master Gehrman.” 

The man shuffled on his feet, and rubbed his neck. He stood a good head taller than her, and towered with the addition of his hat. “Just Gehrman, please.” 

Maria nodded. “As you wish.”

“Would you call yourself a warrior, Lady Maria?”

“I suppose.”

“Well,” he laughed, “would you like to see whether you’re a hunter, too?” She wasn’t sure what he meant, but she was eager to find out. 

Hours after her arrival at the college, Maria found herself on an excavation of a tomb, Gehrman and Laurence at her side. It was everything she’d dreamed, everything she’d wanted. The lady mulled over the texts they’d brought as they descended, the same spark of bright stars she’d felt in her mind’s eye as a child returning to her. Laurence was patient, and fielded all her questions with polite poise. Gehrman shrugged when she eyed him, not quite so the scholarly type. It was a shame, for she was eager to find something to discuss with him.

It was in the depths of the dark lit only by lantern that Maria saw her first beast. A hunched over thing covered in bandages and fur, teeth like rusted knives in its open maw. With a flick of his wrist, Gehrman unfurled his mighty weapon, and in a stunning burst of speed the metal sang through the creature’s middle, splattering the back of his cape with wet viscera.

The man turned, and offered Maria a bow. She raised her hand to her mouth in awe but was interrupted by Laurence.

“Damnit, Gehrman, behind you!” he called. 

Two more of the beasts flung themselves at him, eyes wild and orange. The moment before Gehrman swung again, Maria’s mind flashed white, and she felt a rumble inside herself and in the walls about her. A dream, distant and longing. Go deeper, go deeper. Hunt. 

She didn’t have to think. Lady Maria lunged forward and beheaded one of the creatures as Gehrman took the other, her first kill pocking her cheeks with dots of red. When Gehrman found her face his smile was radiant, and Maria’s heart sang. He was proud, impressed, and the sight filled her. Together they cleared the path, blood dripping from their clothes and roars in their chests as they reached their destination deep within the underground. She’d slain her first inhuman monster, the mere existence of the thing sending her mind down rabbit holes of knowledge and legend, and made what she hoped would be a friend. A good day. 

Maria took to everything. She learned under Gehrman, mastering the art of Quickening and fostering her knowledge of tools and mechanics. Laurence and Rom took to her as well, and shared with her their research as she caught up with the school’s discourse and findings. She’d been plunged in deep, and she couldn’t get enough. 

“The secret is in the blood, perhaps,” Master Willem told her one evening when she found him in his lunarium, “through it we shall transcend ourselves and become more.” He rocked in his chair, his eyes clouded over, “but first, we must hunt them. If they have blood, perhaps they left other things behind?”

Byrgenwerth expanded. Maria, swelling with euphoria at her discovery of like minds, devoted herself utterly to her work. She scouted researchers from all over to aid them in their new quest, secretive and efficient. She took on the dual duties of a hunter and a scholar, clearing the catacombs with her honored mentor Gehrman at the same time that she buried her nose in ancient texts and oversaw blood experiments. They were chasing something magnificent, something transcendental.

Laurence especially enamored with the Old Blood, the very movement of it, its subtle writhing. It was endearing, the way he poured over it, and Maria found herself in their lab more often than she didn’t. Gehrman offered himself as the subject for their first experiments, small things, and found himself stronger, faster, and more capable than should have been upon imbuing the blood. He danced as it was injected into him, and Maria was barely able to contain herself at the sight. She followed suit, student after teacher, and when the Old Blood touched her veins Maria’s mind expanded like leaves in the sun. She hugged Gehrman, babbling about what it would mean for science, for society. He blushed as she giggled into his chest. 

As the scope of their operation expanded, so too did the need for hunters. Gehrman spearheaded the creation of a workshop in Yharnam, and discreetly recruited warriors in from far and wide to help the cause. In his absence Maria took over as the lead hunter at Byrgenwerth, and under her many new discoveries were made as she propelled her experiments in leaps and bounds. 

It was in the catacombs, a dying Cainhurst knight slung over her lap, that Maria truly felt the weight of what she was doing settle upon her shoulders. Beast corpses littered their path. She was lit only by a small lamp, and by its light Micolash scrawled notes on a complex bas-relief that hinted at the way the Great Ones reproduced. Maria stared at her shaking hands, every inch of them covered in blood, and licked the leather of her glove, lapping up the red. Months had passed. She was fighting for humanity’s future, fighting to transcend pain and chaos for something sublime and astral. The cosmos was all around them, swirling and churning like magma, she only needed to find the right hole to reach through and drag it out. She was getting so close, so near to the Great Ones, true higher beings, that her heart raced in her ribs. She felt the same childish glee, the same lust for adventure that colored her youth, and it propelled her like an untamable force. The heartbeat of the universe chimed in her ears, the Old Blood pumping in her veins.

The knight died in her arms, and minutes passed before Maria became aware of his death. She left him behind as she ascended once more to the surface. Hunt the great ones, hunt the great ones, you’re so close.

Years flew by. Lady Maria wasn’t shocked to find herself in love with Gehrman, but it startled her to learn that he returned her affections. Together they trained more hunters to search the catacombs, scrounging the abyss for the knowledge and power they so desperately craved. The two rotated around one another in circles, a dance that lasted them many chances at happiness.

Covered in blood and bone they often found themselves in bed, drawn carnally by the pump the Old Blood in their veins. They lingered in their kills, and meditated on their love. Stimulation, in every sense of the word. Maria had all she wanted.

On the balcony of the college, she would wait for him to finish his duties. He’d find her, and place a hand on her back. She’d offer him a flower, huge and yellow, and would be met with warm breath and laughter. 

“You really are too much, my dear,” he’d say, “that sunflower is immense. Where am I to put them all?”

“You’re creative, you’ll figure something out. Besides,” she snickered, “it’s as big as your ego.” 

Gehrman scoffed, and drew his hat off his head to cover his heart. “Ego? What a thing. Look at yourself.” 

“I am no more or less than I appear, love.” They were older, both of them, but as they aged it seemed to Maria that the gap between them shrunk. 

“Now we both know that’s a lie.” Maria hummed, and leaned her head against his shoulder. The waves of the lake were soft, and distantly she could see her old home lingering behind the mist like a half-remembered dream. Perhaps they ought to take a walk, and sketch the red lilies that bloomed at the base of the river. Two blades, one in each hand. Together, she and Gehrman were at peace. 

The following day the two hunters were met with miraculous news. They woke to the early morning light and Master Willem shouting excitedly in the main hall. Rom shook Caryll of out of bed, but the Runesmith looked still asleep as she walked down the stairs. A great creature, Willem told the scholars, was said to have washed up onto the beach of a nearby inland sea. It would be a journey, but from the descriptions of it he had reason to believe the creature might be a dead Great One. The old man could barely contain himself with excitement, and neither could Maria. She slapped Gehrman on the shoulder as he went for the coffee. It was a far-flung chance, but she couldn’t pass it up. A real Great One! Had their prayers been answered? 

Gehrman and the researchers in tow, Lady Maria took off for the coast. The hamlet was nearly sunken upon her arrival, the cliff it stood on sunken into the sea. The air smelled of salt, and the land held tightly the aura of a dream. 

The first of the villagers appeared from the fog, and Maria stopped in her tracks. They were covered in barnacles and growths of flesh, their skin a pale blue. The look of their humanity had begun to fade, she noted, which all but confirmed Master Willem’s hopes. Maria stepped forward through the muck in the hope to communicate: she had so many questions to ask. 

Before Maria could raise a hand in greeting Gehrman shot forward, his scythe extended, and the villager was cleaved in two, blood spurting like seafoam from their two halves. Maria screamed, a primal fury in her voice like she’d never heard. Gehrman turned and looked at her, his brilliant smile fading from his lips as he took in the sight of her marching forward, blade in hand.

From the houses they came like locusts, hundreds of changed villagers spilling over each other and emitting a shrill howl in unison. One kill had been all it took. In her heart, Maria sundered as cracks of betrayal formed along her ventricles. They weren’t beasts, they were people. Changed people, mad people, but people. And then a realization hit her, and the stars went out in her mind. 

Had they all been people? The beasts in the tombs? Maria bellowed as she charged forward, her blades drawn. Like a hurricane she sawed through the villagers, limbs and heads and intestines splashing down into the standing water at her feet. The hamlet ran red. In the moment it didn’t matter what the villagers were. If she didn’t kill them, she was going to die. She had so much to do, she couldn’t go yet. 

The rest of the loyal hunters followed as Maria and Gehrman cut a path of blood through the town square. Behind them on the shore, Laurence stood with his hands covering his mouth, Micolash sneering next to him. 

Maria let her mind fade. The Old Blood pumped hot through her arms and legs as she plowed through the sea of bodies, her full height streaked red with violence. She flew like a needle, like a knife. Gehrman roared at her side, cutting down swathes of them with keen precision. Behind them, back towards the village entrance, Maria spied Micolash and Laurence breaking open the skulls of the fallen villagers to look for eyes. Master Willem’s eyes, his eyes. Unending research. 

When she reached the coast, no one was left. Maria panted for breath, the hairs straight on the back of her neck as Gehrman kneeled beside the great creature before them. It was a behemoth, bone white and sickly long like a squid. It bore human arms, and a human face, though they were far larger and more alien than Maria’s own. Tears filled her eyes. 

Bile built in the girl’s stomach and she vomited onto the wet sand. A trail of red followed her, and Maria realized in pale fear that she didn’t remember walking onto the beach. The other hunters found space next to Gehrman as he slit open the corpse of the god before them. Samples. 

“I’m sorry, Maria,” he said, “I hadn’t thought this would affect you so. I should have been more delicate.” He could have looked her in the eye, proven that she was his sole care. 

“We didn’t have to kill all those people,” she replied, her Rakuyo shaking in her hands, “why did you do that? I was going to talk to them!” 

“They weren’t people, they were beasts.” With a jerk, Gehrman pushed the flesh of the creature aside with the blade of his scythe.

“Then gods, we’re all the same.” 

“Perhaps. But we’re so close. Just a little more, and we’ll all become something so much greater. Humanity will rise, my love.” Gehrman reached into the Great One’s chest cavity, and withdrew a still wriggling body. The rain peppered Maria’s nose, and the blood began to wash away. When had it started raining? When had her bones begun feeling so heavy, like lead sewn inside her flesh?

Gehrman cut the Great One child’s umbilical cord, and handed the small, writhing creature to another hunter. An orphan, a birth from a corpse. Was it afraid? Could it cry? “What will we do with that?” Maria asked.

Her mentor sighed, and stood so he might off her an outstretched hand. “The work will continue. We keep going. Are you going to be alright?” Maria found Gehrman’s gaze, and within his eyes she saw the writhing of the Old Blood. As he spoke, Micolash and Laurence arrived. Kneeling where Gehrman had just been, Micolash withdrew a knife and began to cut up the creature, issuing orders to the hunters so they might take it back to Byrgenwerth. 

Maria held herself tight, and looked up at the sky. “I think not.”

On their way from the village, the Lady Maria spied a well. It, too, was awash with the mixture of red blood and pale rain. Her fury boiling inside her, she flung her blade into its depths and listened for the clang of metal until she could hear it no more. 

Dire news awaited upon her return. In her absence, one of the Cainhurst advisors she’d arrived with had snuck off into the night with some of the Old Blood, ferrying it to the castle on the island to present before their matriarch. The rest of the knights were banished outright, and Master Willem seethed in his chair with fury. He left the option open for Maria to stay, in honor of her excellent service to his cause, but she was shaken, and could not provide the immediate answer he desired. 

She lay in her room, her damp clothes strewn about as she cried. Several times Gehrman knocked, and on each she turned him away. Hours passed; the night grew deep and heavy. Before the break of dawn, one last knock came upon Maria’s door. 

It was Laurence. He looked haggard, and had a satchel full of notebooks and scrolls slung over his shoulder. He spoke before Maria got the chance. “I’ve had a disagreement with Master Willem. He fears the blood, the fool, and wishes to find another way to ascend. Perhaps the eyes.” He locked gazes with Maria. “He blames the Old Blood’s influence on yourself and Gehrman for the death toll in the hamlet. Tales have reached him of the two whirlwind hunters who murdered an army. Come with me, I’m leaving this place.” 

Maria shuddered, and closed her eyes. She only saw the writhing image of the orphan, unable in her mind to comprehend the horror it was to experience. “Who else is coming?” Master Willem faltered, it seemed, burdened with the same knowledge as she. They both wished to stray from their path, the path they’d all cut in blood and sweat, together. No. It had to be worth something. They’d come so far, she couldn’t let it all slip away after doing so much wrong. The samples, the research. Her experiments. 

The beasts. “Micolash, Caryll,” Laurence said, glancing away, his brow furrowed, “and Gehrman.” 

“Very well,” Maria crossed her arms, “but I will no longer be a hunter.”

Laurence nodded, and they were off into the dawn with everything they could carry. The Byrgenwerth deserters settled in Yharnam in a small abandoned church of a god no one remembered. “Are you feeling better?” Gehrman asked her when they arrived, lines of pain and regret etched in his face. 

What could she possibly say? It was all too raw. “I don’t know.”

“What do you want to do?” He placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “You can walk away. No one will blame you.” 

“No.” She shook her head on impulse, ignoring the cries of her weary heart. “It can’t be for nothing.”

Gehrman squeezed again in acknowledgement. “As you wish. If it’s not too bold, may I hug you?”

She didn’t deserve it. They were blood splattered corpses, both them, alive far beyond the end of their marks. “Please.” She embraced him, and for a moment let herself feel the same warmth she’d cherished for so long. 

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Maria swallowed her heart, and the work went on. They’d left a piece of the umbilical cord with Master Willem as a parting gift, but the remains they kept became the cornerstone of their research. Everything she’d done, everyone she’d killed, beast or no beast. It had to be for something.

A year, another. More investigations into the tomb, more blood. Then a breakthrough, and the cosmos ripped open before the battered scholars. Micolash couldn’t stop laughing, and Caryll found herself weeping openly upon the ground. From the depths of the labyrinth came a chalice of eldritch energy, and through its visage Maria finally gazed upon the living eyes of a Great One who had once been human, a massive hunched-over being with wings of sinew and a thousand tiny eyes on a massive, bulbous head. Her eyes seemed to slip over it, unable to focus until she forced them to and she could hear pops inside her skull.

Perhaps once she’d have felt ecstasy. Before her was the living embodiment of everything she’d strived to achieve, even if it couldn’t tell her how to change as it had. Instead, Maria settled into the terror that had transformed into her new normal. Had Master Willem managed to see such a thing, his presence years lost from her life?

With the left behind Great One’s help, Laurence developed a concoction from the Old Blood that could cure any disease. A gift, another step towards ascension. He opened the abandoned church to the public and proclaimed it a gift to the gods, and offered miracles to all who needed them. Perhaps he needed the miracle, too. They’d been so close for years, yet never so far. 

His new blood spread, and as news of it caught fire across the world, Yharnam grew. The influx of visitors brought commerce, wealth. His Healing Church took hold, and Laurence proclaimed himself the first Vicar in a grand opening ceremony. A different kind of power than he’d wanted, sure, but he’d still found power just the same.

Maria watched from the garden of Gehrman’s workshop as the buildings erupted from the ground around her and the streets filled with every kind of person that existed. Laurence turned the Great Ones into statues, into monuments. All of Yharnam bowed in their worship before him and his blood. 

She nestled with Gehrman in the flowers, their hunters gone for the night, and watched the stars above with a full and terrible horror. Their little Yharnam had transformed into a metropolis of art and culture, a power unknown throughout the land in any time before. People were healed. People were happy, invigorated with communion, basking in their own glory. Still, it wasn’t enough. Maria’s ambition held, her guilt held, her want held, even if it meant living in the Astral Clocktower day-in and day-out to hold the hands of the test subjects that her Choir imbued with the rotten dregs of Kos. Ascend, ascend, make messengers to the stars who could carry their pleas for heaven and grant the boon Maria needed to absolve herself. She’d never forget their screams.

“Are you holding up alright?” Gehrman asked, stroking the Lady’s cheek with tender affection. 

Maria squeezed his arm. “It doesn’t matter.”

In the depths of night, years later, the deserter scholars beckoned a god. To Maria, it was their last hope of success. She was so, so tired. With a remaining piece of the orphan’s umbilical cord and the brainwaves of Maria’s celestial emissaries, Laurence succeeded in calling a Great One, a true Great One, from beyond the veil of the cosmos. With it came a depth of communication that nearly shattered Laurence’s mind, and a knowledge that perversed him like leeches inside his muscles. The being brought the blood moon with it, and the red lines of its glimmer shone upon all of Yharnam. 

They started as rumors first. Bakers growing too much hair, blood ministers snarling and biting into their patients. Then the first attacks came, and Maria knew their work was done. It was almost a relief to be faced with certain doom.

Laurence, ailing and frail, commanded Gehrman to take to the streets and sweep up the scourge of the beast, erasing the mad ones under the cover of night and let no blemish come to his magnificent city’s reputation. Maria had been walking the streets one night, the blood moon overhead, when a beast attacked her. She cut it down like paper, but it was not the assault that rattled her afterwards. The beast was the same as what she’d seen in the catacombs, the same as what the Pthumerians long before had become.

Gehrman trained new hunters with every waking moment: Ludwig, Djura, Eileen. Their power grew because it had to, because the scourge was growing out of control and they had no real solution. Sitting in her chair in the Astral Clocktower above her chamber of screams Maria smiled regretfully, and knew there would be no longer be any escaping their fate. It had come before, and it would come again, and there was naught to be done. So long as the Moon Presence remained in the city sky, its inhuman utterances like the most potent of drugs to Laurence’s ears, the men imbued of the Old Blood would become beasts, and Yharnam would fall.

She and her friends had set out to save humanity, but their arrogance had blinded them to the reality of it. The Great Ones were not gods, as Laurence preached, but creatures much the same as her. Unknowable creatures, but just as capable of pain. The last thing Maria wanted was to see everything she’d ever dreamed of destroy the places and people she held so, so dear to her aching heart.

Glancing out the window, Maria through of Gehrman, no doubt out on the hunt. He was devoted to the end, and for all his mistakes she still loved the fool. She was sorry he’d have to find her as he would.

Alone in the clocktower, she conjured an image in her mind as she raised her blade to her neck. Her friends, laughing and sharing a drink in the cold halls of the college, decades past when everything felt so free. Laurence and Gehrman trying to best each other in an arm-wrestle as Rom and Caryll flirted by trading trivial on lesser-known invertebrates. Micolash scribbling notes even at the dinner table, his etchings obtuse and strange. Master Willem beside them in his rocking chair, a warm smile on his unkind face, a contented sigh leaving his lips.

Maria drew the steel across her artery.


End file.
